Optimize – SEO can make or break you. Use strong keywords in your descriptions, utilize ALT text, add outbound links, and link to internal pages. These simple tasks are crucial to the functioning of your website.

Be Creative – Tell a story with your content. Have fun with weekly blog posts that are actually interesting to your customers. If your not a writer, hire a freelance content writer to engage your audience. Spend some of your downtime researching what others a writing about and what grabs your attention. What type of content are you actually reading vs scrolling past?

Be Social – Keep up with your social media presence. Post weekly content on all of your platforms, share information, and start conversations.

Be Visually Interesting – Find interesting graphics for your content. Hire a freelance designer to create infographics for brand awareness. Make sure to include images in your blog and social media posts.

Watch Your Competitors – Keep track of what your competition is doing and learn from them.

Listen to Your Customers – Getting online referrals and reviews is a key part of your brand’s online success. Respond to your reviews on Yelp and Google. Start a conversation with your customers and show that you care.

Repurpose – Reuse and recycle old content. A lot of your content calendar can be made from previous posts. Schedule things out in advance based on your previous month’s impressions.

Be Patient – Building a successful following online takes time. A popular website or blog is not built over night. Keep at it and stay positive.

Especially if you live in a city, billboards can become eyesores. I often find myself critiquing over cluttered and unoriginal advertisements for most of my commute to work. Awful imagery, even more awful tag lines create a response in me that does not cause me to research the company, but actually refuse to.

Twist-Creative.com in Cleveland ran a marketing campaign that caught many by surprise and created A LOT of brand awareness. They matched up words like Butter, Soup, Pickles and Beer with imagery of mountainside landscapes. This caused a lot of reaction from the community and almost all of it was positive.

Most people appreciated the simplicity and quirkiness of the advertisements. The campaign was an experiment about how design is a conversation, and that “any good conversation needs a conversation starter.” The advertisement sends you to a website where you are asked your reaction to the billboard.

This month I have been researching drippy paint inspired typography. Whether your brand is emblematic of a unique street style, or you are looking for an eye catching contemporary font for your logo, drippy letters are certainly in fashion.

Snarky comments on social media are not going to drive you the most leads. Surveys show that honesty, friendliness, and helpfulness are the most important traits for consumers when choosing a company. Although humor can certainly be helpful to build brand awareness and gain the attention of an audience, it is not necessarily the defining factor for generating sales.

So what type of content should you be focusing on writing? Stay true to your brand image. And on this note, make sure you define what your brand image is BEFORE outlining any content for your social media campaigns. Consistency is key, and the image you portray on your channels will define how consumers view your business.

I came across a fun article ranking the best ads of 2017 into a top 25 group. My personal favorite is definitely the ostrich Samsung commercial. I just think it is a very creative marketing campaign for VR goggles to advertise virtual reality as a way to accomplish and experience things that are not otherwise possible.

Sometimes the more obscure and creative examples drive the best results to consumers. Another example of why creativity is key in marketing campaigns. Not only is it pleasurable to watch, but it is immediately something that will drive shares and interactions. I mean, who doesn’t want to see an ostrich with VR goggles on?